Like Our Mountains

A History of Armenians in Canada

A sweeping social history of the Armenian-Canadian experience that links the Old World with the New through a far-flung diaspora.

The Armenian Genocide that killed 1.5 million people almost one hundred years ago is only now becoming part of public consciousness. Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill's elegant narrative is the first comprehensive account of the experience of the more than seventy-five thousand Armenians who have found refuge in Canada from the late nineteenth century to the devastating earthquake in 1988.

Like Our Mountains relates the history of the Canadian Armenian community from its founding, settlements, and economic adjustments, to its social, religious, political, and cultural life, transformations over generations, and relationship with other communities in Canadian society. In her examination of the cities settled by Armenian immigrants - Brantford before 1914, St Catharines after World War I, Hamilton after World War II, and Toronto and Montreal from the 1960s to 1988, Kaprielian-Churchill has carried out exhaustive research in English, Armenian, and French sources, including archives, oral histories, diaries and memoirs, letters, and material culture. Especially moving are the interviews with survivors of the genocide that provide the book with an emotional intensity rare for a work of historical scholarship.

Written in prose that will appeal to scholars and general readers, Kaprielian-Churchill combines the skills of a historian with the imagination of a novelist in a compelling history of Canada's dynamic Armenian community.

"In her accomplished social history, Kaprielian-Churchill enters the minds and emotions of her interview subjects with compassion and passion. A definitive work." Robert Mirak, historian and author of Torn Between Two Lands: Armenians in America, 1890 to World War I"A wonderful account of the Armenian experience in Canada written with the love of a communal insider and the detachment of a scholar." Gerald Tulchinsky, Department of History, Queen's University

Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill is Professor of Armenian and Immigration History, Department of History, California State University, Fresno. She specializes in the field of Armenian diasporan history.